Viewers are thrown into the mindset of the teenage Temple with little introduction or fanfare, experiencing the world as she does: in blisteringly vivid images that pop into her head faster than a Google search and that she describes in her book as “full-color movies, complete with sound, which run like a VCR tape in my head.” In that sense, at least, her condition is ideally suited to moviemaking. “Temple Grandin” fuses the two with a wonderstruck look at feedlots and loading ramps and a practical, pragmatic view of autism. Ranchers don’t commission her stockyard designs because they are moved by her life story parents and teachers of autistic children don’t care about her theories on curved cattle chutes, but view her accomplishments as a yardstick for their own hopes. Grandin credits autism for her achievements, arguing that she would never have been so attuned to animal sensibilities or the fine points of agricultural engineering without the distinctive vision and hypersensitivity that comes with autism.īut to the outside world her eminence and inner workings are incongruent. Helen Keller, Christy Brown and Jean-Dominique Bauby, the subjects of those movies, became famous because of their extraordinary personal histories in all three cases their most lasting work is autobiographical.
In some ways her story is harder to tell than other, similar tales of valor, be they “The Miracle Worker,” “My Left Foot” or “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly,” in which success is so intimately linked to disability. Most comfortable around animals, she grew up to become a sought after animal behaviorist and livestock consultant, world famous for designing humane slaughterhouses.
Grandin was nurtured at home and by a few farsighted teachers who helped her unlock her talents. At that time most psychiatrists considered it a mental disorder caused by cold, withholding “refrigerator mothers.” Helped by a mother who was anything but, Ms. Grandin was born in 1947 in Boston, and her autism was diagnosed when she was a child. “Temple Grandin,” which has its debut on Saturday and stars Claire Danes in the title role, is a made-for-television biopic that avoids the mawkish clichés of the genre without draining the narrative of color and feeling. That restraint, unusual in a portrait of a person who heroically overcomes a handicap, is oddly captivating and makes the story all the more touching. In her autobiography, “Thinking in Pictures: My Life With Autism,” Temple Grandin explains that she values “positive, measurable results more than emotion.” The HBO movie “Temple Grandin” honors its heroine’s priorities, stressing deeds over tearful setbacks and joyous breakthroughs.
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